Big Damn Heroes
by simonsaysfunction
Summary: The crew of The Siren's Call aren't exactly your run-of-the-mill pirates, especially when they're wrecked on the planet Kirkwall. (Alternate Universe)
1. Pirates

Isabela peeked over the stacked crates, checking for any sign of the patrol that they had been rabbiting from for the past ten minutes. Or so. Isabela never had liked to keep time especially when forced into incredibly small spaces made smaller by the presence of two other people. Time always went so much slower when she was experiencing the absolute opposite of fun.

"They're gone, go go go." She hissed, scrabbling over and out of their impromptu hiding spot and smoothing out her shirt in a move more meant to calm her frazzled nerves than to primp. It took Aveline and Fenris a much longer time to get out properly and tried to stretch until they noticed that their captain was halfway down the corridor already with pistol and knife drawn. They shared a look and then jogged to catch up, keeping close tabs as they skirted around corners like rats looking for crumbs. And, really, it wasn't a far off description.

A quiet 'aha' punctured the tense silence as Isabela crouched down and placed a device from her pocket against a heavy metal door, picking the lock with some complex algorithm that she didn't and never would understand beyond that it was incredibly more useful than the old methods, but not nearly as satisfying. The lock clicked and the door slid open, showing them the treasure of stolen property that they would be shipping back to Varric's contact as soon as they moved it from here to the cargo bay of _The Siren's Call_. The trouble was getting back out with the heavy boxes in tow and not getting caught.

Leaning against the frame of the wall, Isabela tapped her finger against her ear to hail the ship, waiting for the line to connect with a faint click and then she could hear the voice of their (completely off her nut) pilot.

"…no, no please, anything but that. I'm begging you. Think of the children!" Hawke's voice was pitched in an imitation of frightened femininity, no doubt playing with her prized possessions of "collectible figurines" that littered the dash of the ship and also her quarters.

"Hawke."

"Ahem, aye aye?" Isabela rolled her eyes fondly at the immediate tonal change and could imagine the pink that was staining pale cheeks.

"How are we looking?"

"Really, considering the fact that we're plundering a Chantry vessel, probably for Andraste's unmentionables, we're looking remarkably well." Isabela could also imagine now, the easy smile on Hawke's face as she leaned back in her chair and put her feet up, dark hair lazily falling over her forehead...and she should really stop fantasizing about her pilot in the middle of another incredibly stupid job.

"Make sure to keep it that way. Tell Merrill to prep the ship in case things get fun."

"Your definition of fun has never matched mine." Aveline intoned dryly, crossing her arms over her chest and stepping over to assess the weight of the crates they'd be hauling by hand (by _her_ hand, undoubtedly) all the way back to where the shuttle was sitting pretty and waiting. Hopefully.

"Nor mine." Not that Fenris had been with Isabela nearly as long as Aveline had, but the brooding elf had a point. Even if he was a fugitive on the run from the Imperium and the Chantry both, and Aveline still thought it was incredibly daft of Isabela to allow him on the ship especially considering how he and Anders nearly came to blows on an hourly basis. As much of a challenge as Anders was, they needed him intact to keep the rest of them in the same fashion.

"Aye aye."

Isabela was always pleased by Hawke's professionalism while they were on a job, eyeing the others balefully as they never did miss an opportunity to take the piss out of her. Not that she treated them any differently, of course, but she was captain and they were supposed to do as she said.

"All right, you clever bastards, let's be pirates."

It would have gone as planned if not for the unfortunate collision with a guard who, before Aveline could silence him with a blow to the back of the head, had already shouted an alarm and then the ship's alarms had started. It was difficult running the rest of the way towards where the shuttle was, especially after Isabela handed off her share of the weight to Fenris and Aveline to clear the route ahead of them. Aveline swore colorfully at her, as did Fenris though his were in Tevene.

Typically, Isabela just laughed, the adrenaline of the fight already coursing through her as she ran off and hailed Hawke on the way.

"Let me guess, everything got_ fun_." Hawke drawled, executing a precise combination of button presses and switch flicks to bring the ship roaring to life. "Merrill, move like your arse is on fire!"

"Aveline and Fenris will be along shortly." Isabela was already a bit breathless and Hawke could hear the sound of gunfire and death in the background as she sat up and switched over to pilot mode. It was her job now to see they all got safely out with their lives, and the cargo, intact. Something she did not take lightly. Never again would she take having lives in her hands lightly.

"We're coming in; it'll only be a short jump to get the shuttle to the docking bay and then we're off like the top on a new bottle of brandy."

"Best pilot in the bloody universe."

"You say the sweetest things when we're in mortal peril."

And then the comm went off and Hawke breathed, a calm settling over her as she became The Pilot, the ship merely an extension of her mind and her hands as she maneuvered her closer to the Chantry vessel, swinging around to align with where they would need her. It wasn't a pleasant job, not really, nor was it what she thought she'd be doing with her life, but it was fulfilling on a level she never thought of, this being a pirate business, and she wouldn't trade it for all the sovereigns in Orlais.

It was a long period of silence before she heard Isabela's voice over the comm again affirming what she already knew as she felt the shuttle dock and then they were off in a push of the throttle, pulling a turn that a clunky warship like that couldn't even dream of without shearing the hull in half.

Once they were clear, Hawke eased up, setting the ship back in cruise and finally exhaling properly as she pushed her hair from her face and swiveled her chair just in time for Isabela to burst into the cockpit, whooping in her high off another successful heist, another successful thorn in the side of the Chantry.

In nary a second she had a lapful of exuberant Rivaini pirate, knees astride her hips and hands absolutely everywhere. Hawke barely had the time to pull her brain from the nebulose of job and stick it firmly in the moment that was Isabela's hand was right there and..._oh_.

-

Blessedly, the rest of the crew left them alone to their celebrations, though Hawke would have preferred it be in either of their quarters. The bunk wasn't much more comfortable than the chair but it certainly was roomier. She could already feel her wrist cramping.

She tried her best to smooth out her shirt as they made their grand entrance into the mess. Not that it was any sort of secret what they got up to, had been getting up to for most of the time they'd all been a crew. Despite Isabela's dalliances every time they were planetside and Hawke's staunch refusal to label something lest she give name and power to the feelings roiling in the pit of her stomach. No, no, this arrangement was perfect and not a secret and there were no strings or rules or promises to be kept.

"So, the plan is to drop the goods with Castillon and be on our merry way to spend our coin!"

"Do we even know what's in those crates?" Aveline was ever the paragon of justice despite that she had left the Chantry after the end of the last Blight and somehow wound up a pirate with the rest of them. She couldn't quite let go of her conscience.

"Don't know, don't care." That was Varric, already half into a mug of the rat's piss ale they had left over after their good stores had run out. "It's coin, good coin at that, and I won't put my nose up at it."

"I like to eat, Aveline." Hawke reasoned quietly, trying to soothe any ruffled feathers the woman might have over their rather indiscriminate (lack of) standards lately. But jobs had been scarce now that the Chantry was patrolling heavier, worried about the threat of the qunari and the return of the Grey Wardens threatening their stranglehold. It wasn't a time they could afford to be choosey. It was an uncomfortable burden to try to be the voice of reason when she herself held so many demons clawing at her mind.

"I'd like us to be careful. We can't exactly afford a real run in with the templars." Her eyes flicked to Fenris, briefly, then to Hawke and Merrill and finally to the figure of Anders skulking in the doorway. No, none of them could risk it at all.

"Who wants to play Wicked Grace?"

And that was that. Anders went back to the medical bay and Aveline to her quarters while the rest crowded around the small table to play cards as if the conversation had never happened and the consequences weren't looming overhead.


	2. Proximity

Everything on the ship was quiet in the aftermath of game of cards. Isabela and Varric had, as usual, beat the rest of them out of their coin and scribbled chore promises, leaving it to a duel of the masters. The masters of cheating, at any rate, though both would gasp and act as if you had tried to stain their shining honor. Isabela had gotten a hand up and took the pot at last, smiling smugly at the lack of anything she'd have to do for the next month or so as well as the pocket change that she would, undoubtedly, slip back to Merrill while the mechanic wasn't looking.

Hawke was half undressed in her cramped space, running on auto as she took inventory of the maneuvers she'd taken _The Siren's Call_ through so that she could run calibrations later, after she'd slept. It didn't help that it had genuinely scared her when she'd heard gunfire while Isabela was on the other vessel, that Aveline and Fenris weren't backing her up and that she'd gone on to play heroic pirate captain again. It almost made her angry, except that if she let herself feel angry over being afraid for the well-being of the other woman, then she would have to label what she felt and she was not ready for it. So instead she merely sprawled down on her bunk, kicked off her boots, and tried for some rest.

Merrill was down below where she always was, cooing over the monstrous machinery that kept the ship running as it did. Even if it were rather patchwork from their recent difficulty in getting decent work, the small elf still loved them dearly and made sure to speak to them, running spindly fingers along her parts as if stroking the belly of a contented cat that purred for her. It would be a while before she even tried to sleep. It was too close a call today and she wanted to make sure everything was running as smooth as silk.

Isabela and Varric were in the captain's quarters, halfheartedly planning their next moves over a bottle of Antivan brandy. Star charts and maps were spread out on every surface and the two were hunched over them, dragging calloused fingers over the inked lines in some kind of dance that made sense to them. It was all hushed whispers and secrets, their pasts not allowing them to let go of that feeling of urgent privacy as if at any minute they would be discovered even while in the blackness of space.

Aveline and Fenris were in their separate locals, but doing the same thing: cleaning their weapons. Parts of guns and oils and cloths were spread out before them in an intricate puzzle along with shining blades that would be tucked into the folds of clothing. The two were like walking armories, never without at least five weapons at any one time. Just in case, they would say almost unanimously, if pressed. Both of them knew what it was to be without some sort of backup. It never went pleasantly.

Anders was, as ever, in the infirmary, cataloguing and reorganizing his equipment for the ten millionth time, anything to stop the thoughts tumbling around in his brain that kept him up all night and all day unless he stayed busy. His fingers pushed along labels and into drawers, headless of the possibility of getting pinched by anything sharp and pointy. He knew exactly where everything was at any given time, even with all of his endless reorganizations.

The activity lulled in a few hours, sending the ship into a dreamless quality as it hurtled through space towards their destination.

The ship was dreamless, but Hawke was not. She dreamed of fire and blood and death, the stenches of each clinging to her skin, burrowing beneath it to snake around her very bones like serpentine chains, keeping her prisoner in the memories that haunted her every moment. Her stomach rebelled, nausea overwhelming her even as she ran through the charred and smoking remains of her home.

A ghostly figure appeared in the distance, taking the shape of her sister, Bethany, calling, screaming _you monsters_ as she fought at the harbingers of death and decay and suffering. No matter how fast Hawke ran, how much she screamed at her sister to go, it always ended the same. A life snuffed short with a sickening crunch as she was battered against the unforgiving ground, blood dripping from her ear like a pen left to paper for too long.

Hawke wailed her grief and rage, ripping them all apart with the power that the Chantry had given her, making their blood mix with Bethany's purity upon the dust, staining it dark and sodden.

She ran again, faster this time, towards the next figure, that of her mother, Leandra. Leandra cruelly destroyed, cut upon and open and dragged away to be fashioned again into a mimicry for the hissing evil that plagued the galaxy. Again, Hawke was never fast enough, never good enough to save her, to prevent it from happening. _You're my daughter._

The scene shifted and compressed, forcing her into tunnels, the evil on her heels again as she raced side by side with her brother, her darling headstrong brute, trying to escape to their freedom, away from all of this death and decay that permeated their pores and turned them into monsters as well. He slowed, lagging behind as he protested that he wasn't feeling well at all, and Hawke turned to find him pallid and sunken, a shadow, stumbling to the ground when his body would no longer support him.

She screamed. Uncaring if the things found them now, but instead a golden dwarf and a golden man and others of glittering silver came and took her brother away until he was standing on the horizon as silver as the rest of them while the two of gold stayed with her and kept her afloat as everything turned to sticking crimson.

-

Hawke woke with a start, nearly banging her head on the ceiling as she sat bolt up in bed, clawing at her throat as if she had swallowed something before her surroundings came back to her and she realized what had actually woken her wasn't her nightmare at all, but the proximity alarms.

She hurried into her trousers, stumbling in her haste as she dashed out the door and up, up, up until she hurtled herself into the pilot's chair to check the flashing alarms and silence the wail that was echoing. Her hands trembled as she discovered the cause, turning slightly when Isabela and Aveline burst into the room. Hawke noted, distantly, that Isabela had at least covered her modesty this time.

"Qunari."


End file.
